Times Gets It

Bright, bright Melissa Feldman writes about Urban Ag. in the April 11 NY Times Mag.

Her piece Growth Spurt quotes BrightFarm's Benjamin Linsley,

“The rooftop business is not a passing trend but the beginning of a new approach to food production.”

60 kilowatt Green

Fast Company's May 2010 issue came in the mail and there is a nice sidebar showing a schematic of the Gotham Greens factory-roof farm complete with a 60 kilowatt solar array.

Highly-placed Brooklyn officials (actually a pal of my electrician) says this greenhouse farm and photovoltaic (PV) array will be on the roof of the Ice Cream Factory at 1205 Manhattan Ave Commercial Packaging Co. at 77 Commmercial St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY.

60 kW peak power might take about 6,000 square feet (about two tennis courts or about 75' by 75') of PV cells on average.

Vapor-wares

Well here it is Spring 2010 and Gotham Greens seems to have yet to file a single permit for their planned Jamaica Queens rooftop hydroponic farm.

Note that neither Queens Boro President Helen Marshall, nor her staff contacted us with this stunning setback for GG. This may be because Ms. Marshall probably still refers to Queens as "Gateway to the 1939 World's Fair" which made such an impression on her at the tender age of 10. It can be hard to keep up with all the changes going on in this land of contrasts.

It was Mrs. McCully (or MacGuffy) in the NYC Department of Buildings who gruffly answered the phone and admitted that there were no applications, no permits, no inspections and no certificates for 148-02 Archer Avenue, Jamaica.

Metro Ag Innoversity confab

Were you at the Metropolitan Agriculture Innoversity international confabulation last week, Feb 10th ? Logically it was held in Beverly Hills. That's Beverly Hills, Michigan of course.


You know it was a winner with a mission statement like this:

To Explore Innovation And Integration in Food and Agricultural Systems That Can Contribute to Sustainable Development in Urban Settings

I was there and wow, what food for thought.